Why do two apps show different signs? (Ayanāṁśa, explained)
Almost every 'different answer' between astrology apps traces to one of three named settings — the ayanāṁśa, the house system, or the node type — not to one app being broken.
2-minute read · plain language
The 24° question
Western (tropical) astrology anchors the zodiac to the equinox; Indian (sidereal) astrology anchors it to the stars. The gap between the two — currently about 24° — is the ayanāṁśa. A planet at 10° tropical Aries sits near 16° sidereal Pisces: same sky, different ruler on the map.
Even within sidereal
Sidereal astrology has several ayanāṁśa conventions (Lahiri is the Indian standard; KP and Raman differ by fractions of a degree). Near a sign or nakshatra boundary, that fraction can flip a label.
The other two settings
House systems (whole-sign vs Placidus and others) redistribute planets across houses, and mean-vs-true node moves Rāhu–Ketu by up to ~1.7°. All three are conventions a serious app should NAME on the page.
The honest part
When two tools disagree, the honest question is 'which conventions is each using?' — not 'which is lying?' Any chart service that hides its ayanāṁśa, house system and node type is asking for trust it hasn't earned. Every AstroAmrit page states all three.
Common questions
Which ayanāṁśa should I use?
Lahiri (Chitrapakṣa) is the Indian civil standard and the default here. KP practitioners use the KP ayanāṁśa by design. What matters is that the choice is stated, and kept consistent.
My Moon sign differs between two apps — who's right?
Check the ayanāṁśa first: if your Moon sits within a degree of a sign boundary, Lahiri vs Raman can legitimately disagree. The longitude itself should match to within seconds.
Where do these fall in your chart? AstroAmrit maps every sky event onto your own birth chart — which house it touches, which of your planets it meets — with every claim cited to the computation behind it.
See these in your chart →How this table was computed
AstroAmrit is a glass box: every number on this page is reproducible from the stated method. These are astronomical facts, not predictions. Times are instants of the event's global maximum or exact crossing; your local civil date can differ by one day depending on timezone.